Fritillaria Meleagris

The Fritillaria Meleagris or snake head Fritillaria are now flowering in my garden and looking amazing. A jewel in an English spring garden this is one of my favorite flowers. There checkerboard petals give this plant an exotic look but it is actually a native of the UK. Once common in the pastures its is now rare in the wild. This is due mainly to changing farming practices although the dig for victory campaign during the second world war had a big impact with pasture being turned over to grow food.

There small delicate bulbs can be prone to slug and Lilly beetle. I have seen a few half eaten bulbs. Just yesterday one of my chickens was running round with one it had scraped up.

I will be planting more of these later in the year but this time I will ignore the instructions on the packet and plant the in large clumps as this will give a much better display. I have also set areas of my lawn over to wild flowers and will be adding Fritallaria to these areas.

We moved into this house in 2013. At that time the garden was a blank canvas, This blog is a scrapbook of my gardening journey. Something I can look back on and remember the highs and lows, something that perhaps other people will enjoy reading and hopefully commenting on along the way.